n the morning and that he
must go.

"I have not been here an hour," he said, "and they are still sitting up
at the other house. You can see the lights. Your brother has not come
in."

"Oh, at the other house," cried Eugenia, "they are terrible people!
I don't know what they may do over there. I am a quiet little humdrum
woman; I have rigid rules and I keep them. One of them is not to have
visitors in the small hours--especially clever men like you. So good
night!"

Decidedly, the Baroness was incisive; and though Acton bade her good
night and departed, he was still a good deal mystified.

The next day Clifford Wentworth came to see Lizzie, and Acton, who
was at home and saw him pass through the garden, took note of the
circumstance. He had a natural desire to make it tally with Madame
M; auunster's account of Clifford's disaffection; but his ingenuity,
finding itself unequal to the task, resolved at last to ask help of the
young man's candor. He waited till he saw him going away, and then he
went out and overtook him in the grounds.

"I wish very much you would answer me a question," Acton said. "What
were you doing, last night, at Madame Munster's?"

Clifford began to laugh and to blush, by no means like a young man with
a romantic secret. "What did she tell you?" he asked.

"That is exactly what I don't want to say."

"Well, I want to tell you the same," said Clifford; "and unless I know
it perhaps I can't."

They had stopped in a garden path; Acton looked hard at his rosy young
kinsman. "She said she could n't fancy what had got into you; you
appeared to have taken a violent dislike to her."

Clifford stared, looking a little alarmed. "Oh, come," he growled, "you
don't mean that!"

"And that when--for common civility's sake--you came occasionally to the
house you left her alone and spent your time in Felix's studio, under
pretext of looking at his sketches."

"Oh, come!" growled Clifford, again.

"Did you ever know me to tell an untruth?"

"Yes, lots of them!" said Clifford, seeing an opening, out of the
discussion, for his sarcastic powers. "Well," he presently added, "I
thought you were my father."

"You knew some one was there?"

"We heard you coming in."

Acton meditated. "You had been with the Baroness, then?"

"I was in the parlor. We heard your step outside. I thought it was my
father."

"And on that," asked Acton, "you ran away?"

"She told me to go--to go out by the studio."

Ac